2026_04_12_Exodus

[0:00] Let's give a real quick review where we've been. About how long was it from Joseph's...

[0:13] ! You remember who Joseph was, right? Joseph was sent to Egypt. Who sent him, by the way?

[0:24] ! God sent him. Now, the world would say his brother. His brother's did. I would say, well, that was his brother's doing. Did they have anything to do with it? Yeah, accessories, yeah. Yeah, they had something to do with it. What was their original plan, by the way? To kill him. Reuben didn't like that idea. Reuben was going to set him free. He said, let's throw him in this well. Empty well, dry well. We'll throw him in there and then fetch him out. I'll fetch him out and get him back to dad. Well, when Reuben came back, where was Joseph? He was on his way to Egypt, wasn't he? Now, everything went well in Egypt, right? We have to go pretty quickly. Okay, don't jump to the end. What happened in Egypt with Joseph? Well, that came about. Is that how it began? Not hardly.

[1:47] Joseph was sold to Potiphar. Potiphar was an important military man in Pharaoh's system. I don't know what you would call it. So, Potiphar, what do we know about Potiphar? He was blessed. Why?

[2:17] Was he a good guy? He was blessed because of Joseph. Who blessed Potiphar because of Joseph said his word. That is, the Bible tells us who blessed Potiphar specifically. Who blessed him? God did. Why did God bless him? For Joseph's sake. This is a plan. Folding out. So, I don't know what I'm doing. So, Joseph, Joseph becomes what? Head of everything in Potiphar's house. Because Potiphar saw that God was blessing him, didn't he? So, he said, hey, I'm not even going to worry about anything except what I eat. And he was doing great. So, everything went smoothly thereafter, right? Now, what happens? Potiphar's wife happens. What's she do? She tries to seduce Joseph. What does Joseph say? Run, baby, run. So, Joseph tries to escape. What does she do? She grabs his coat. And now, he gets away free, right? Now, what happens? He goes to jail. Why? Because she lied about it. Okay? Now, remember, Potiphar knew that he was blessed because God blessed him because of Joseph, right? But as soon as his wife said that, what did he do? He believed his wife? He went opposite. He threw out what he had known for what she said.

[4:55] By the way, this isn't a doctrinal statement, but it bears a lesson for me to be careful not to throw out what I know or who I know for something that I hear new that sounds good to me.

[5:16] Don't be swayed by every... By the way, I'm glad you brought that up, Dave. How are we not swayed by every wind of doctrine? But, well, by knowing the doctrine, specifically, that verse in Ephesians tells us, or that section in Ephesians tells us that we are, as the body of Christ, to interact one with another, edifying one another, so that we will all grow up into the fullness of the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then, henceforth, will we no longer be children tossed about by every wind of doctrine? How do I grow up? Part of how I grow up is interaction with the body of Christ.

[6:13] Now, not everybody who calls himself part of the body is. I mean, we do have to use some discernment there, but if I don't know the doctrine, I'll be tossed about pretty easily, won't I? So, back to Joseph.

[6:33] So, he's in jail. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker... No, the baker and the cupbearer are in jail with him, and they have dreams. He interprets the dreams. One guy gets a good interpretation. The other guy says, hey, I like that. What do you have to say about my dream? Well, you're going to lose your head. Well, thanks, Joseph. Did that happen? Who told Joseph the interpretation of the dream? Who told him? God did. He didn't make it up, did he? God told him. By the way, does God tell every person directly everything? No. The Word of God says specifically that God chooses the prophets and apostles, and the holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, right?

[7:52] So, the scripture, and in Peter we read, all scripture is given by God, and none of it is of any private interpretation. That is, I don't get to say what the Word of God says.

[8:13] That's not up to me. God said what he said regardless of what I say. That is, it behooves me to be careful that I rightly speak the God's Word, right?

[8:29] But that doesn't mean that me wrongly speaking God's Word changes God's Word. That's not how it works. I don't get to choose what is said. God chose that.

[8:44] Okay, so Joseph interprets the dreams. Then, Pharaoh has a dream, and what happens? Kabera remembers Joseph, says, hey, you've got a Hebrew down there in the prison who's running the whole show in the prison, by the way, because God blessed even the prison because of Joseph.

[9:15] God's setting up something here. So, Joseph's running the prison. He's a prisoner, but he's running the prison. Now, Pharaoh has a dream.

[9:30] The cupbearer remembers Joseph. Pharaoh brings Joseph in. Joseph interprets a dream. Let's see quickly. What was that dream? Seven years of good, and then followed by seven years of famine, an intense famine.

[9:52] man. So, during that time, so Joseph, by the way, then, makes a suggestion. He says, hey, Pharaoh, I have a suggestion for you.

[10:05] What's his suggestion? Yeah, put it away for a rainy day. Don't spend it all now. That's not a bad lesson either, is it?

[10:18] He says, you need to appoint somebody, or my suggestion is, you'll appoint somebody who's faithful that will store up this stuff while the going is good, and then you'll have it for when the going gets tough, when the famine hits.

[10:40] You'll have more. So, what's Pharaoh think? Good idea. And, you're the man.

[10:54] So, Joseph becomes fairly important in Egypt, doesn't he? Second man.

[11:05] Only, only in the throne does he not have authority. Whatever Joseph says in Egypt goes.

[11:17] That's how it works. So, during that time, God uses Joseph to prosper Egypt for seven years. And, during that seven years, Joseph institutes what will become a permanent thing, and he says, okay, we're going to tax the people this, a fifth, of all the produce.

[11:49] We're going to lay it up in storehouses, and he stores all this grain all over Egypt. So, when the seven years of famine hit, what happens? They start distributing the food for free, right?

[12:09] Oh, no. What? You pay for it. All right. So, what happens in that next seven years?

[12:26] All the countries surrounding Egypt come in to buy grain. Egypt's getting, is all of Egypt getting wealthy? Some of them are, but who's really getting wealthy?

[12:40] Pharaoh. Pharaoh's really, Joseph is buying all this stuff, and he's putting the gold in Pharaoh's coffers. So, Pharaoh's storing up a lot of wealth.

[12:52] What about the Egyptians? Egyptians? Egyptians. Everybody, except the priests, are selling what they have.

[13:04] And first, they give up all their, basically, their money, most of their money. Then, when they run out of that, what do they sell?

[13:17] Livestock, and then they sell their land, and then they sell themselves. themselves. So, that's how we get here, and whose plan was that?

[13:35] That was God's plan. See, now, by the time we get here, or by the time we get to the end of Joseph, basically, Pharaoh, this is, this has become a feudal system, and Pharaoh owns the land, and the people serve, they work it, and they give a fifth of all the produce.

[14:09] So, now, he has a permanent system, and everybody, by the way, in Egypt, is committed, because they belong to Pharaoh, everybody in Egypt is committed to a certain servitude, as far as the building projects are concerned.

[14:34] But now, it's going to be different. See, in the meantime, in the second year of the famine, Joseph brings in his family, doesn't he?

[14:46] Now, where do they settle? They settle in Goshen. Why? It was in the delta, but there's more to it than that, because it, not only was it fertile land, but they are, what's their occupation?

[15:08] They're shepherds, and the Egyptians, at least the high-level Egyptians, abhor the shepherds.

[15:19] It's an abomination to them to be around them. So, Pharaoh had told Joseph, settle them, and settle them in any place you want in the best of the land, because Pharaoh knows why he's being blessed.

[15:35] Well, now, we come, by the way, about how long from the death of Joseph until, until Moses' birth?

[15:47] Approximate. About 400 years. God's quiet for about 400 years. He, God was quiet for a little over 800 years between the birth of Seth and Noah, or by the time Enoch walked the earth.

[16:07] He, that is no new revelation. The only thing we are told in that section is genealogy. And then, he's going to be quiet for another 400 years between Malachi and Matthew, or the birth of the Lord.

[16:35] Does God's silence mean God isn't working? I don't want an answer from you right now, but I do think about this sometimes.

[16:50] Do you ever pray for something and you think God's kind of quiet? does it mean he's not working?

[17:08] Well, let's try this again. Does God's silence mean that God is not working? No. No.

[17:18] No. No. He doesn't take vacations. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't slumber, right? Okay. So, now, there arose, there arose in Egypt another Pharaoh who knew not Joseph, nor how the Lord had blessed him through Joseph.

[17:41] He didn't, by the way, when the generation arises that forgets how they got there.

[17:54] It's usually a bad thing that results, isn't it? Whether you're talking politically or spiritually, it's usually bad.

[18:09] I remember, just, let's use the political side, just for a brief moment, a brother in the Lord said something many years ago.

[18:21] I was a young middle-aged man when he said this, and never forgot it. He said, he said, this country is going to rue the day that we elect a president that never saw the Great Depression.

[18:39] Now, he had something in mind. What do you have in mind? squandering resources, taxing people and giving it away.

[18:53] He said, this is a bad deal, and when we elect a president that never saw what it was really like when it was hard, we're going to be in bad shape.

[19:05] It almost was prophetic, wasn't it? So, there were another Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.

[19:18] Now, now we get to the birth of Moses. This Pharaoh is worried about how many Israelites there are now. Now, there aren't 70 people like there were who came in.

[19:32] Now, there are millions, a couple million. All right, so, he's worried that they're going, that they might have an uprising and overthrow him.

[19:47] They're pretty powerful now. Or, if a foreign invader comes, they might join the foreigners and attack him. Well, they were slaves in that time period, yeah, because all the people in Egypt had to do a certain amount of servitude.

[20:11] It wasn't like they lived in a shack, and we will see that. It wasn't like slavery in North America like we think of slavery frequently.

[20:22] It was forced servitude, and they would have rotations where they would have to lay off their own work and do this, do the building projects, or in this case, making brick.

[20:39] So, for the building projects, they had to make brick with mud and straw. So, we'll get back to that briefly. Oh, man, this is a long intro, isn't it?

[20:52] So, so, now, now they are enslaved. That is, they have this forced labor that they have to do.

[21:07] They're still making money on their own. We will see, if we get in our time machine, we will see that they went out of Egypt with their own slaves, too. I mean, they, it wasn't like they're living in this shack and they don't have any movement.

[21:25] They're, they're, they still have a great deal of movement, but nevertheless, let's get, so they, they are in, in Goshen, Moses is born.

[21:39] Now, Moses is born at a time when the Pharaoh had said to the midwives, kill the baby boys. We've got too many.

[21:52] Let's kill the baby boys. And the midwives said, well, the women are too vigorous. They give birth and before we get there and the baby boys are alive and, you know, that's why we haven't done it.

[22:11] Then Moses, or then Pharaoh gives another order. Throw all the baby boys into the Nile, into the river. All right? So, Moses' parents don't do that.

[22:28] Or, they don't want anyone else to do it. So, what do they do? They hide him in an ark. And they put him at the edge of the river, floating in the bulrushes.

[22:42] And who's watching? His sister's watching. And, here comes Pharaoh's daughter, she comes down, hey, what's that?

[22:55] Go fetch that for me. One of her maidens comes up with it. Hey, it's a baby boy. This is a Hebrew baby. What does Miriam do? She's Johnny on the spot, if you will.

[23:08] Miriam on the spot. She comes right up. Hey, you want me to fetch a nurse for you? So, who does she get? Moses' mother.

[23:20] mother. So, Moses' mother nurses him up. When he is, when he's weaned, and that is finished off, now he has been instructed in the true God by this time.

[23:36] And he goes, then, he's going to be raised up, though, to manhood, where? In Pharaoh's house. He's going to be in, he's going to be court.

[23:47] He's going to be fairly important. But, we learn in Hebrews that sometime in there, when he was about 40 years old, said Stephen, Moses made a decision.

[24:05] What was it? Well, not just visit, according to Hebrews, what does it say? That he decided that it would be better to suffer with the children of God than to enjoy the, Hebrews puts it this way, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

[24:31] That is, I would rather cast my lot with God's people, the true God, than to have it great in a temporal situation.

[24:46] By the way, every one of us who belongs to Jesus Christ has made a decision very similar to that, haven't we?

[24:57] We have said, I want to stake my eternal destiny, my eternity on Christ. I believe what he did on the cross.

[25:12] And I believe that his righteousness will be applied to me if I trust him. And because of that, I'm not going to think temporally about it.

[25:25] I'm going to think eternally about it. We've all had to make that decision. So, he goes out, he's among his fellow men, he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, what's he do?

[25:43] I don't think I'm going to get past the intro. He kills the Egyptian, buries him in the sand, thinks nobody's seen it.

[25:53] The next day he goes out, he sees a couple of Hebrews fighting. What's he do? Yeah, he breaks it up. He says, hey, why are you hitting your brother?

[26:04] And the Hebrew guy says, what are you going to do? Kill me like you did the Egyptian? Yeah, I saw the video. I saw this camera.

[26:16] So, Moses flees. Where does he flee? To the wilderness, specifically to the land of Midian.

[26:28] While he's there, he's going to be there for a spell. While he's there, he marries. He marries the daughter of Jethro.

[26:40] He has a couple of kids there. God talks to him at the burning bush. Moses is out on the backside of the desert, feeding his father-in-law's sheep, and what's he say?

[26:56] Hey, there's a bush. That's burning. He doesn't say anything about it right away, but that's been burning a spell, and it's still there.

[27:10] I'm going to go see what's going on here. So, he goes over to see it, and all he sees is a burning bush. I knew we were asleep.

[27:24] All he sees is a burning bush. Okay, and it's not, okay, you're using C's literally. I'm sorry.

[27:35] I'm using it metaphorically. God talks to him from the bush, and God gives him some orders, and what are the orders? Well, yeah, take off your shoes, it's holy ground.

[27:50] By the way, the ground was holy because of what? God said so. Now, and he was there, but he gives Moses some orders.

[28:06] I'm going to send you to Pharaoh. You're going back to Egypt. I'm going to send you to Pharaoh, and you're going to tell Pharaoh that he's going to let my people go. Pharaoh. So, Moses corrects God.

[28:20] You remember that? Oh, God, you haven't thought of this. I'm not very good at speaking. Oh, Lord, you forgot this part.

[28:36] Now, God says, no, you're going, you're the one. Now, who chose him? God chose him.

[28:48] He didn't say, are you willing to go? He said, you're the one. I'm going to help you be willing. There's a story I want to tell, but I have to skip it.

[29:04] So, I'm going to tell part of it. dad said, I want you to do this, and I didn't want to do it.

[29:20] I don't want to do that. I can help the way you feel. I can help that decision. So, God's going to help Moses make the right decision.

[29:32] So, he gives him some signs, he gives him some statements, he calls Aaron, they meet, by accident, of course.

[29:45] No. God told Aaron, go meet your brother. So, they meet, they call the elders of Israel, they do go back to Egypt, they call the elders of Israel together, and they say, some of you are going with me to Pharaoh, and this is what we're going to say.

[30:07] And we're going to start with, let us go three days journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord. Pharaoh says, well, no.

[30:21] In fact, Pharaoh says, who's the Lord? We're talking about knowing God, right? Who's the Lord, and why should I listen to him?

[30:32] Well, God's about to tell him who he is, and why he ought to have listened. So, here we are, and I'm going to launch in just with the first few today, because I know we want to get to some new stuff, at least.

[30:57] Exodus chapter 6, we're ready for verse 28, and going on into chapter 7 there. So, as you look at that, he told Moses, that is, God told Moses to tell Pharaoh everything that God would have Moses to say, and what does Moses reply to God?

[31:24] Yeah, in fact, he says, this is the second time the phrase is used in Exodus, he says, I'm a man of uncircumcised lips.

[31:36] now, he doesn't mean the lips haven't been cut off, right? He's using that metaphorically, and he's saying, I'm not really sanctified for this.

[31:53] That's what Moses is really saying. See, the circumcision, the literal circumcision, was a mark of the covenant for Abraham, given to Abraham.

[32:05] That was a sign of the covenant. And Moses is using that to say, I'm not really fit for this job. By the way, the apostle Paul was given the gospel of the grace of God, not of works, but of faith, right?

[32:26] And that's rhetorical. The answer is yes, that's right. That was given specifically to the apostle Paul. But the apostle Paul is going to be very frank, and he's going to say, who is fit for this?

[32:43] And that's a rhetorical question. Let's answer that one. Who is fit for any ministry? No one.

[32:55] In ourselves, no one's fit. Who's fit for salvation? For heaven? By myself. Who is fit in their righteousness?

[33:08] Who's righteous enough to stand before God? The scripture's very plain with that several times, is he not?

[33:20] No one. No one. He's saying, now, God doesn't say you're right, Moses, but I can hear it. You're right, Moses, you're not fit.

[33:34] But you're depending upon yourself. See, this isn't going to be Moses' work, is it? Whose work is this?

[33:45] This is God's work. So, he says, I'm a man of uncircumcised lips. What does God reply to him?

[33:58] Okay, I'm going to make you as a God in the eyes of Pharaoh, and Aaron's going to be your prophet.

[34:12] You're going to tell Aaron what to say, and Aaron's going to convey this. So, when it says that Moses said and Aaron said, we'll use those synonymously usually, right?

[34:24] so, that's, that's, he said, I'm going to make you important to Pharaoh.

[34:36] See, Moses is going to say some things to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh's going to get really ticked, but Pharaoh's not going to hurt him yet. will Pharaoh, he said, I'm going to tell you what to say to Pharaoh, and this is what you're going to say.

[35:02] Let my people go. Now, and Pharaoh, God says, and Pharaoh's going to listen to you. No.

[35:18] Oh, man. Okay. What does he say? I'm going to harden his heart. Why? And then Pharaoh's going to listen to you.

[35:39] No. He's still not going to listen. Okay. And God says, now, I'm not going to get into predestination and all that stuff because I don't understand how to parse it all out.

[35:55] I know that Pharaoh has a part of this in the hardening of the heart. But nevertheless, God says what he says, but he does say why.

[36:09] Why? Why? What's right? They're going to know that I am the Lord.

[36:34] By the way, someday, every person who has ever been born is going to know that God is God.

[36:55] That's right. There is going to come all roads actually do lead to God. Only one leads to heaven with God.

[37:07] All the rest lead to the great white throne judgment. I want to know God now. I don't want to wait for judgment.

[37:23] In fact, I think it's in Peter that he will say today is the day of salvation. Right? We are not promised this afternoon.

[37:37] We don't know. Now, I realize that's easy for me to say when I'm standing healthy and feeling good, but I shouldn't lose track of the truth of it, should I?

[37:55] I'm not promised this afternoon in this life. I am promised eternity in Christ.

[38:09] That's the promise. When I'm suffering in this life, it's easy for me to get caught about it and to lose track of eternity, but I should not lose track of eternity.

[38:23] anyway, he says, the Egyptians are going to know that I'm God. By the way, even the Canaanites are going to know that.

[38:34] We'll see that later, much later. But how old are Moses and Aaron at this time? 80 and 83.

[38:49] Now, as we sit today, 80 and 83 seems, we say, he hadn't even started through the wilderness yet. And he has a few years to go, doesn't he?

[39:06] That's hard to imagine for me, but, but, nevertheless, he's 80 years old when God sends him to Pharaoh.

[39:19] And I'm going to stop there. we'll pick up, God willing, next week at chapter 7, verse 8. Thank you for your patience.

[39:30] I'm sorry about the long intro. I wanted to rehearse in my mind to get myself rolling about where I am and how I got here. Have a wonderful week.

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